


Yearning for the fool she called home

by Elisexyz



Series: 25 days of Swanfire fic-mas [12]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Pregnancy, Wish!verse, mostly angst, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: It was supposed to be a wedding, not a funeral.





	Yearning for the fool she called home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Christmas without you" prompt in the [ "25 days of fic-mas" challenge on Tumblr](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/tagged/25-days-of-fic-mas/chrono). I have... no excuse for this. None. Sorry. (PS: Once again, I did what I wanted with Emma's characterization, I only kept the canon _events_ )  
>  It's a follow-up to another one-shot, but you don't need to have read it. It only references that they've met when Emma disobeyed her parents, that's all.  
>  Title from [here](https://genius.com/Duncan-sheik-left-behind-lyrics).

“—so I will walk through the door—” Emma explains, a note of barely contained excitement and a full-blown smile on her face, as she pulls him through the room, hand in hand. “—and you are going to be waiting right here,” she completes, fixing him on the right spot and smiling up at him. “And as you can see, there isn’t room for _that_ many people here, so you’ll be happy to know that that horrible guest list doesn’t concern the real ceremony.”

Baelfire snorts, relieved. “That’s good news,” he concedes. He wasn’t raised into the whole royalty thing, and he tends to be a little stiff during big events. The reception _after_ the actual ceremony is still going to be huge, but at least for the first part he can relax a little.

Well, maybe not exactly _relax:_ in the last few days, his eyes have been glued to her stomach most of the time, even though there is nothing to be seen, not yet.

“Are you going to keep staring at me like that until our child is born?” she calls, amused, when his eyes fall down for approximately the millionth time only that morning.

His head shoots up, and he offers a nervous grin. “I know, sorry,” he says, quickly. “It’s just— there’s our _kid_ in there,” he completes, his whole face lightening up as he bounces a little on his feet.

Before telling him, she was a little nervous: she had no real reason to be, as her mother highlighted more than once after she told her, there was no way Baelfire was going to react _badly_ — yet, they aren’t even _married_ , and maybe, she thought, he never really wanted to be officially part of a royal family, since he was never overly fond of what all that entailed, so his joy and excitement lifted a weight off her chest. The fact that his enthusiasm hasn’t lessened one bit after the first impact reassures her every day.

“Yeah, I know,” she grins, openly showing her own excitement and taking both his hands into hers. Then, all of a sudden, it occurs to her: this is _their_ child. “Oh my god,” she breathes out, and her face must have changed colour, because Baelfire immediately frowns, concerned.

“What?”

“This is _our_ child,” she stresses, giving him a little pull as if that could make him come to the same realization that she did.

“Uh, yeah?” he replies, slowly. “That’s what I said?”

“ _We_ made it,” she insists, her throat closing up and her heartbeat increasing.

He snorts, confused. “I sure hope so.”

She rolls her eyes, letting go of him to flip him in the shoulder. “You don’t _get_ it,” she reprimands. “We were literally _always_ sneaking out. We _met_ because I wandered off when I wasn’t supposed to.” Realization creeps up on his face, only to turn into mild amusement. Emma is more edging towards panic, honestly. “We are in so much trouble,” she lets out, wide-eyed.

She can already see a little kid slipping through her arms, running away and discovering new ways to sneak out that she somehow never thought of, she can already picture spending _hours_ wondering where they ended up—

And Baelfire is going to be no help whatsoever, because he’s close to laughing at her face, amused by her panic, apparently.

“It’s not funny!” she protests. “What if they run away and something _happens_ to them?!”

“Come on now, nothing’s gonna happen,” he assures, shaking his head with fondness and rubbing her arms reassuringly. “You said it yourself, we were troublemakers, we know the tricks.”

“Yeah, and my mom was an outlaw once, that didn’t stop me from outsmarting her,” she counters. “I’m going to lose my child as soon as they start walking, I _know_ it—”

“Nah, between the two of us _and_ with the help of your parents I’m sure we will keep them in check at least for a couple of years more than that.”

That earns him another flip in the arm.

“ _Bae_ ,” she protests. “This isn’t _funny_.”

“It kinda is,” he counters, shrugging. “Because I already know that you are going to be a great mom. Nothing to worry about.”

That makes her melt a little, which in all likelihood is exactly what he meant to accomplish. She smiles slightly, shaking her head with fondness and stepping forward to let him wrap her into a hug.

“Better?” he asks, rubbing her back.

“Yeah, yeah, meltdown successfully averted, sorry,” she sighs, contently resting her cheek against his shoulder. “They _are_ going to be a nuisance of a child though,” she adds.

“Probably,” he chuckles, shrugging. “They are gonna make me _so_ proud.”

She smiles, tightening her hold around his back. “You’ll make a great dad too, you know?”

Unlike her, he didn’t exactly have the best role model, so it’s no surprise when he stiffens a little against her. He soon relaxes though, laying a kiss on the top of her head.

“I hope so.”

 

 

“It will be over soon,” her mother assures, offering a gentle but pitiful smile as she keeps one hand steady on her lower back, pushing her forward as if she knew that the only thing that keeps her moving is automatism.

“I know,” she replies, drily, although she’s pretty damn sure that the whole thing will seem to drag out for _years_. She swallows back a fresh wave of nausea, taking a discreet breath as she does her best to avoid eye contact with any and all crying people in the room.

She still spots Granny hiding half of her face behind an handkerchief, and when she quickly adverts her eyes she finds herself making eye-contact with Pinocchio instead. He offers an hint of a smile that says ‘God, get me out of here’, which makes her feel understood for a second, enough that what could be considered a very small, complicit smile shows up on her face.

Then she’s brought back to when she’d meet Baelfire’s gaze during one of those horribly long events and they’d silently commiserate together from a distance, and she wants to cry. Or throw up. She has been doing both at regular intervals for two days now.

Her dad is walking by her side too, and thankfully he had the good sense not to take her by the arm as they go, but in spite of that little precaution Emma still feels a lot like she’s being walked down the aisle, only—only to a dead man.

“We’re here for you, alright?” her mom speaks again, and this time Emma doesn’t even raise her eyes on her. She has been hearing that kind of meaningless reassurances over and over again, and they do nothing to help.

It feels like she’s on the verge of crying, all the time, and she _can’t_ bring herself to do it. There’s something heavy in her stomach, a longing that can’t be satisfied, and she doesn’t know what to do with it, she only wants to _scream_.

God, she has a kid inside her. She has a kid and no husband. She isn’t even a real widower, just a lonely woman carrying inside her the last shred of a life that could have been. They were about to start a family, and he _left_. The bastard.

Emma remembers her parents discussing what to do, quietly, maybe thinking that she couldn’t hear or wouldn’t listen. They decided to announce that she and Baelfire had gotten married during a private ceremony and that they were just waiting after Christmas to celebrate in public – this way, the child’s status won’t ever be questioned and Baelfire can be buried as a part of the family.

God, it’s Christmas.

As she takes her seat, keeping her eyes fixated on her black gloves – she never liked dressing in black, she’ll probably like it even less after today –, she isn’t sure whether he would be annoyed that his funeral is during the holidays or he’d be pleased to be the reason why this year she’s spared the annual Christmas party. It makes her want to laugh, and her eyes fill with tears instead.

Her mom grabs her hand as her dad squeezes her shoulder before standing up. She lets them touch her, because she doesn’t think that she could open her mouth without throwing up.

She doesn’t even listen to what her dad has to say, but she can very well imagine it: terrible loss, hero, great knight, and so on. A lot of useless platitudes about a good man dying young and how his sacrifice will be honoured— it’s so much bullshit, it’s unbelievable.

She almost regrets her decision of not speaking during the ceremony: she was supposed to, but when she stated that she _couldn’t_ her parents didn’t push her, and she was grateful, but now—now that she’s sitting there and she knows that nobody is going to say the most important things, no one is going to actually _explain_ why this is such an horrible injustice and how she doesn’t think she can survive it, because they have been joined at the hip for so long and he’s home and he’s _gone_ —

Last Christmas, they went ice-skating together, in loving memory of when they met. They sneaked out of the party as soon as people started getting too tipsy to actually take notice – it was much easier to opt out when they were kids, but they made do –, and they went to that very same lake, laughing together every time they fell over. It wasn’t as often as the first time, but they weren’t exactly dressed in comfortable clothes.

“If I fall in the water with this thing on, it’ll drag me down in two seconds flat,” she remembers commenting, with a very eloquent glance at her enormous dress and a wide grin still on her lips, even as she shivered because of the snow melting in her hair.

“Then I’ll just have to pull you up in time,” he replied, bowing as he offered her his hand to invite her to start moving around in the mock of another dance.

Well, she’s drowning _now_ , and she’s still waiting.

“Are you sure you don’t want to say anything?” her mom whispers, hand still in hers as she glances at the coffin on their left. Emma doesn’t follow her eyes: she doesn’t think that she can stomach seeing him.

A part of her does want to speak, to say everything that’s floating in her head, to make everyone _understand_ — it feels unfair to let him go without even giving a speech.

But then again, he left her without even meeting their _kid_. She told him not to go, that she had a bad feeling about that whole trip, and he didn’t _listen_. Screw him.

(Most importantly, she doesn’t think she could get through the first few words without being reduced to a sobbing mess.)

She nods once.

The ceremony goes by in a blur: she spends most of it trying not to throw up, wiping away the tears that kept silently falling down every time she blinked, reminiscing in the privacy of her own head, if only out of sheer masochism, and stubbornly ignoring every word out of her parents’ mouth.

(She still catches some of the bits and pieces she had expected about _heroism_ from her dad, and some fond words about how he was like a son to her from her mom; she stares at her own hands the whole time and thinks of all the things that her kid will never get to live and how she’s sure that she’ll never be able to give a good enough eulogy to make them feel like they actually knew their dad.)

Turns out, she _can_ stomach looking at him without throwing up. It’s a close call, but she manages her goodbye and her knees don’t even give out until she’s on her way down to her seat. She’s sure that that blank face will haunt her for the rest of her days.

When they take him away, her dad leading the procession, she doesn’t follow. She isn’t required to, and she’s way too busy fighting the urge to yell at them to _stop_ and bring him _back_.

Pinocchio comes up to her with another lifeless grin, stepping closer and opening his arms as an invitation. She steps in, uselessly shaking her head in denial and unsure of what she’s trying to tell him.

He doesn’t ask, wrapping his arms tightly around her instead. Emma hides her face in his shoulder and pretends he’s someone else – it doesn’t work at all.

“Hey. Want to sneak out?” he offers, whispering in her ear, his tone light.

She stiffens, a sob catching in her throat at the words, but she nods all the same. They are stopped a thousand times on the way out by people offering condolences and brief hugs, but they soon make it out – Emma is pretty sure that her mom noticed, but she did nothing to stop her.

As soon as they are out of the palace, the freezing air knocks the breath out of her, and she wraps her arms around herself as she shivers.

It’s snowing, and unlike last year she can’t seem to ignore all the snowflakes falling on her face and in her eyes. It’s horribly cold, but she doesn’t think she can go back in.

“Here,” Pinocchio offers, lending her his jacket, since he has many more layers than her on. She accepts silently, but her shivers don’t subdue.

(“It’s _freezing_ ,” Emma lamented once, when they were still kids and they didn’t have the time to grab a jacket, because they ran out in all hurry so that she could avoid her piano lesson.

“How about—” Baelfire grinned, rubbing his arms to warm himself up a bit. “—first one to Pinocchio's house wins?”)

Pinocchio is giving her a weird look, like he wants to do _something_ but he isn’t sure what.

(Baelfire always seemed to know, somehow.)

“If you try to say that you’re sorry—” she finally warns, and for a moment there she almost sounds like herself.

Pinocchio scoffs. “Not even _dreaming_ of it,” he assures. A pause. “The bastard had no right to leave without a goodbye. Merry fucking Christmas.”

She isn’t sure if the anger that flares up in her stomach is because of the insult or because she agrees with him. Probably both.

“No party this year at least,” she mumbles, grimly. She’d take all the parties in this stupid world over the funeral she just left. “We would have gotten married in a couple of weeks,” she adds, somehow managing to offer the ghost of a smile.

He takes a sharp breath, nodding as he kicks a bunch of snow with the tip of his boot. “Yeah, I know.”

“I _told_ him not to go,” she insists, tears swelling up in her eyes. She tries to wipe them away, but more come and snow is melting all over her head, and, honestly, who cares? She has every right to cry.

She’s supposed to still have him to complain with about the Christmas party, they are supposed to exchange gifts and he’s supposed to whine because ‘What do you buy to a _princess_?’, which is just ridiculous because he always managed to find the sappiest presents that made her smile so wide that she feared her face would get stuck, they are supposed to be together in the snow, planning their wedding and their future and being stupidly _happy_ because they are going to be _parents_ —

She’s going to be mother to a fatherless child.

“He was a stubborn bastard,” Pinocchio comments, stepping a little closer and rubbing her back comfortingly. “It’s not on you.”

She scoffs, because that may be true, but it doesn’t feel like it. She _knew_ , somehow, and she didn’t stop him. She could have insisted, she could have thrown a very cheap shot and called him leaving abandonment of their child, knowing that it’d hurt him _deeply_ because—

Her eyes widen. The Dark One.

Maybe—maybe that’s the solution. Maybe she can still salvage this.

Pinocchio seems to have caught the shift, because when she raises her eyes he’s frowning at her.

“I need your help with something,” she announces, making a quick attempt at wiping her cheeks and trying to make her voice sound steady.

It could work. It could _work_.

After all, how much crap did her parents go through before they were allowed to be happy? They made it, in the end, because they never gave up. You get happy endings by chasing them stubbornly enough, right?

“Whatever you need, your highness,” Pinocchio jokes, with a quick bow.

Her stomach drops at the familiar exchange said in the wrong voice, and she can only hold on with tooth and nail onto the hope that she will _fix_ this. For her and for her kid.

(She’s also going to slap him in the face as soon as she has him back.)

 

 

Baelfire told her that he was the son of the Dark One long before they got engaged. He said it with barely masked fear, as if he were just waiting for her to shut the door on his face.

(She never could have.)

She offered not to tell anybody, because it wasn’t her secret to tell and it hardly seemed to matter anyway. As far as she knows, he only visited his dad once, and never went back. She wonders if he went to tell him that they were expecting.

Thinking of the monster in the basement as the grandfather to her child is more than a little weird.

“Alright, go,” Pinocchio says, getting ready to be look-out. “Although I still think that he won’t help.”

“Trust me,” she replies, firmly. “If he can, he will.”

Or at least she _hopes_ he will: it’s his son they are talking about, but the Dark One is a monster. She just hopes he isn’t so far gone that he’d refuse to lift a finger to help.

“Oh, a visitor! Wonderful!” the Dark One chants, as soon as he catches sight of her.

Emma takes a sharp breath, ignoring the tears perpetually pushing behind her eyes and swallowing in spite of the lump in her throat.

“Can you fix it?” she immediately demands, her voice strong and confident as she approaches the cell.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, dearie,” he replies, giving her an awfully interested ounce over. He looks so _amused_ , and it makes anger flare up in her stomach while her confidence starts quivering at the same time: if he doesn’t even appear sad, how many chances are there that he’s going to help? “Your highness,” he corrects, cheerfully, with a teasing bow.

“I mean _Baelfire_ ,” she says, forcefully. It almost feels good to be mad at someone that’s right in front of her for a change. “Can you bring him back?”

His cheerful expression soon turns into a frown. “Back?” he echoes. “What do you mean by _back_?”

Only then it occurs to her that he’s locked in a cell, and that she shouldn’t have taken for granted that someone had talked about it in front of him, that he had somehow heard.

Her anger evaporates and her stomach sinks, as a subtle feeling of dread makes its way in the back of her mind. “He’s—” she tries, choking a little on her words as tears start gathering in her eyes. She’s so _tired_ of crying. “He’s dead,” she finally manages, and the horror that the Dark One doesn’t bother masking doesn’t help her any.

“No,” he says, forcefully, as if in an attempt at giving her an order. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She scoffs. No need to tell _her_.

“Can you help or not?” she insists. “I’ll let you out, just— can you bring him back?”

It’s a dangerous offer, because you shouldn’t make deals with the Dark One no matter what and it’s also something that allows him a lot of room to _cheat_ — she doesn’t care, she needs to try.

But his eyes are locked on the ground, his expression hasn’t shifted from a mixture of shock and denial, and he’s gripping the bars so tightly that she thinks his bones might snap any second.

“Magic can’t bring back the dead,” he finally says, quietly. “It’s a rule.”

It takes only a few seconds for her to explode. “You are the Dark One!” she yells. “You don’t follow the rules!”

He scoffs, and there’s something sharp and dangerous behind his look as he raises his eyes on her. “It’s not that _simple_ ,” he protests. “That’s just something magic _can’t_ do. No matter how talented or powerful the wizard— dead is dead.”

She swallows, shaking her head slightly. She’s pretty sure she’s about to throw up everything that she’s ever eaten.

“So it’s over?” she asks, her voice thin. “Just— gone?”

She doesn’t get an answer, but his face says enough.

A wave of anger washes through her, and she lands a solid kick on the cell, making the Dark One flinch in surprise. “It isn’t _fair_ ,” she hisses. “He’s your _son_ — do something!”

“If I _could_ —”

“You _left_ him! You left him and now you won’t even _try_ to—”

“Watch your mouth!” he interrupts her, raising his voice for the first time.

Emma looks at him through a veil of tears. “You know what? It’s fine,” she says, after a pause, a bitter smile on her face as she takes a step back and gestures widely with her arms. “It’s fine, you— the two of you, you are the same,” she continues, viciously, _praying_ that Baelfire can _hear_ this and feel properly _guilty_ for leaving. “Abandoning your kids must be a family tradition.”

The Dark One looks angry, like he would crush her under his feet if he had the chance, then his expression turns to surprise. “Baelfire is a father?” he asks, a strange inflection in his voice.

All at once, her anger turns to sadness, and it feels like it might just crush her.

“He would have been,” she says, softly, offering an helpless shrug before posing her hand on her stomach.

The Dark One just stares.

(“Are you going to keep staring at me like that until our child is born?”)

She turns right around and leaves without excusing herself. He doesn’t even try to call her back.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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